"Have we time for all this?" broke in Mademoiselle, speaking for the first time. "Tell him why Jan Meert is in Plessis."
"There is no need," answered I, remembering the King's promise that, fail or succeed, I should meet the man who had made me homeless. It was truly a genially humoursome way of flinging his old tools to the rubbish heap. "He is there by the grace of God and Saint Louis of Plessis! What I do not understand is why she is here."
"That you may escape! Do you not see?" cried Mademoiselle, half laughing, half in sobs, "Do you not see that there is no need for me to go to Plessis at all now she is safe?"
"Why," said Brigitta, "was it to save me—me, old Pieter the herdsman's daughter, that you came back? Mademoiselle! did I not say he played his part en gentilhomme? Oh, Monsieur Gaspard, you may not own a rood of land worth the having, but you are a Grand Seigneur for all that. To save me! and I burnt Solignac."
"I did not know that."
"You would have come all the same, you know you would."
"I know he would," repeated Mademoiselle, her face all aglow; "but now, thank God! there is no need for either to go."
"No," answered I; "after I have met Jan Meert there will be no need to go on to Plessis. But since she came to warn me, why is she here with you?"
"I'll answer that," said Brigitta, and as she spoke, a flush reddened Mademoiselle's cheeks. "Peasant or Grand Madame, we women are all one flesh. If Mademoiselle had come a-visiting my man in the dusk I'd ask the reason why, and ask it sharply, so to make no mischief I came straight to her."
"It was well meant," said I, "but——"